Women in Domestic Slavery Case Lived in a ‘Collective’ With Suspect, Police Say

Two of three women who say they were held as domestic slaves for 30 years in a London home had previously lived in a political “collective” with a suspect in the case, a police commander leading the investigation said on Saturday.

The women had met the suspect through a “shared political ideology” and then moved in with him, said the commander, Steve Rodhouse, of the Metropolitan Police. When the collective ended, the women were said to be too frightened to leave, bound by what investigators have called “invisible handcuffs.”

The man and a second suspect, a woman who is believed to be his wife, are of Indian and Tanzanian origin and arrived in Britain in the 1960s, Commander Rodhouse said. They were arrested on Thursday and released on bail after surrendering their passports. Both are 67, but their identities were not made public. The British police generally do not name suspects until they have been charged.

“We believe that two of the victims met the male suspect in London through a shared political ideology, and that they lived together at an address that you could effectively call a ‘collective,’ ” Commander Rodhouse said in a statement.

“The people involved, the nature of that collective and how it operated is all subject to our investigation and we are slowly and painstakingly piecing together more information,” he said. “How this resulted in the women living in this way for over 30 years is what are seeking to establish, but we believe emotional and physical abuse has been a feature of all the victims’ lives.”

The idea that three women might have been kept as domestic slaves in an ordinary neighborhood in their city has shocked and confounded Londoners.

Frank Field, a Labour member of Parliament who has advocated a modern slavery bill and the appointment of an anti-slavery commissioner, said the case was just the “tip of a rather large iceberg.”

“We’ve had this example of domestic slavery, but people are being imported to work, almost for nothing, in industry,” he told the BBC.

Aneeta Prem, the founder of the Freedom Charity, which specializes in helping victims of forced marriage, and who worked with the police to help free the three women, said requests for help from the charity had surged since the story broke on Thursday.

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“We have seen an extraordinary rise in calls to our help line since the rescue of the three women came into the public domain,” Ms. Prem said. “We received five times as many calls in 24 hours as we normally do in one week and are needing to increase our resources to cope with this extra demand.”

The three women — a Malaysian woman, 69; an Irishwoman, 57; and a British woman, 30, — are at a secret location and are being questioned by officers who are specialized in trauma, according to the police.

They were freed from the house in the Lambeth district in South London on Oct. 25, a week after the Irishwoman had contacted the Freedom Charity. She had memorized the charity’s help number after watching a television documentary that featured the group and made a whispered call on a cellphone she had secretly obtained.

The exact conditions the women were held under and what why they apparently felt too terrified to leave for three decades remain unclear. At least one woman has complained of beatings and one might have been forcibly married to the male suspect, a person familiar with the case said. The women did not say they had been sexually abused, the police said, but the person familiar with the case said investigators still suspected they were.

A birth certificate was the only document found for the youngest victim, the police said Saturday, leading investigators to believe she had been held captive her entire life. It was unclear whether she is related to either of the other women or the suspects.

The case is unusual compared with others involving domestic servitude, investigators said, in that it did not appear the women were physically restrained. Instead, the picture slowly emerging is one of emotional control over many years, they said.

“Brainwashing would be a simple term, but I think that belittles the years of emotional abuse these victims have had to endure,” Commander Rodhouse said at a news conference on Friday.